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 Post Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2017 2:28 pm 
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Issue is already resolved.

This morning my main system would hardly boot. Half the time it would not boot at all unless I completely removed power. When it did boot it sat at the Alt-Ctrl-Delete screen for ~15 seconds before my mouse/keyboard were seen.

Device Manager did show an unspecified USB device. I'm thinking that the only connected USB devices are my printer and mouse/keyboard and the printer is off.

After about 45 minutes I notice that the power light for my TV tuner is off. Shoot, never thought about it but the tuner is also USB. Rebooted the tuner and all was fine.

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 Post Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2017 4:12 pm 
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Glad everything is sorted out Jay, well done on the detective work. :-)

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 Post Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2017 4:26 pm 
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Not all that good Joan. After all it took about 45 Minutes to notice the tuner's power light being off and the thing is front and center.

I just think it's sort of funny how a little USB device can wreck so much havoc. ;)

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 Post Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2017 5:12 pm 
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My signature "tag line" says it all. :-D

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 Post Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2017 6:07 pm 
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sboots wrote:
My signature "tag line" says it all. :-D

No doubt Steve, no doubt. ;)

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 Post Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 1:41 pm 
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Ah. you see the problem here is you are assuming all this stuff is in animate. I am not so sure. Let me relate an experience I had back in the late 60's when I worked for RCA.

One day my Manager came to myself and my supervisor with a crude breadboard in hand. It was a frequency divider circuit. Frequency multipliers were easy, dividers not so much. I should also describe my environment. A U shaped area with a couple of people working nearby. I got this baby working and got to where it was fairly stable. Then I ran some temperature runs on it. Again stable. All this time there were people fairly close by.

Well after a week and completely satisfied with this circuit board I called my supervisor out to look at it. When he walked up it died. He just said keep after it so I did. Working fine for two days I called him again. Once again he walked up and it died. So I kept working and this same thing happened a third time. This time my supervisor said go read a paper and let me look at it. Hour later he called me and said it was fine, come see.

When I walked up to him it quit on him. He said go way and hour later said come see. Once again as I walked up this thing quit. At this point since he had been kept informed our manager came out, looked at us and said go way. Sure enough after a while he called and went we went to the lab. And once again as we approached him the board again quit.

At that point he said he had a very technical solution. Place the board on the floor, hopped up and a stool, and planted his heel in the darn thing.

How do you explain something like this. Worked in with bodies around, but when you tried to demonstrated to someone it would quit.

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 Post Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 1:55 pm 
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While totally of the wall the human body DOES put out an electro/magnetic field... ;)

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 Post Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 4:20 pm 
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Yeah, but only when a board is being demonstated and not otherwise.


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 Post Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 6:17 pm 
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I have also noticed USB devices causing bootup problems. My machine won't boot, or even post, if a USB stick is plugged into my monitor, which has two USB ports in it.

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 Post Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 6:46 pm 
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Hi Patty,

Yes, USB devices CAN cause issues. One of the first things I did was to think to remove USB devices. I just happened to forget about my TV tuner being USB. ;)

As an aside boot times, even if successful, can be dramatically affected by the number of drives connected. When I first did my re-build of my main system I started with just the SSD and M.2 PCIe drive connected. My boot time to the alt-ctrl-del screen was in the area of slightly over 10 seconds. After connecting three other hard drives, a Blu-ray burner and a DVD burner my boot time to the same alt-ctrl-del screen has increased a lot. Whether old style BIOS or UEFI the system still has to poll each and every drive.

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 Post Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 2:36 pm 
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USBDeview by Nir Sofer can come in handy for nailing down USB device issues, it isn't for the faint hearted though:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html
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Description
USBDeview is a small utility that lists all USB devices that currently connected to your computer, as well as all USB devices that you previously used.
For each USB device, extended information is displayed: Device name/description, device type, serial number (for mass storage devices), the date/time that device was added, VendorID, ProductID, and more...
USBDeview also allows you to uninstall USB devices that you previously used, disconnect USB devices that are currently connected to your computer, as well as to disable and enable USB devices.
You can also use USBDeview on a remote computer, as long as you login to that computer with admin user.


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 Post Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 2:44 pm 
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Thanks for the link Doddie. I'll take a peek. :)

I have a few other utilities from NirSoft. On the page you linked there is another that be looking at, USB over Ethernet. It would be rather cool if I could use the USB TV tuner on my main in my bedroom. :)

<edit>
Forget USB over Ethernet. ;) Not worth $600.00 to do it.

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 Post Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:01 pm 
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Interesting utility Doddie. :) Thank goodness it has the option to remove disconnected devices from the list. ;) Since there is no actual install this could be used as a mobile app; throw on a flash drive and run on any system. Setting it to not show removed devices makes it a LOT easier to deal with in my opinion. Started with like 2.5 screen of devices but after turning off disconnected devices the list dropped to 5-6 devices.

While I haven't 'played' yet the context menu options on a device look nice.
Attachment:
USB deView-context.JPG
USB deView-context.JPG [ 80.23 KiB | Viewed 7995 times ]

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 Post Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 3:01 pm 
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Obviously I can't take credit for the utility but I'm glad you're having fun :D

I was pointed in its direction years ago when I had an issue with a USB device that crashed my pc (XP I think?), I don't recall the details but it turned out it was a long since removed USB device that remained 'detected' by the OS that caused a conflict with the new USB device I was trying to use.

Uninstalling the long since removed USB device via USBDeview resolved the issue when all other attempts failed... indeed, if weren't for USBDeview the cause would likely have never been discovered because the skills required to source issues like that are way above my head!


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